El Blog

How To Leave a Business Review on Google+

A step by step guide to share with your clients

If you are a small business, visibility in the Google maps listings is crucial. One of the ways to help improve your rankings in the maps is by getting reviews from your customers/clients. If you are not already, get into the habit of asking your clients to leave reviews for you. Google wants these to be authentic reviews by real people. There are companies out there who will sell you “fake reviews” but don’t fall for it. You should also not leave these reviews yourself on behalf of your customer, unless you want to risk losing Google’s trust. When you lose trust from Google, you lose rankings and sometimes it’s impossible to get back.

For some of those not familiar with leaving reviews on Google+, it’s not as easy as it is for those of us who are on the web all the time so below are step by step instructions that you can share with your clients if you are asking them to leave a review for you. If you have never done this before, it might sound confusing at first but in reality it’s not. Here’s how to create a review on a Google+ business page in a few simple steps.

1. First, go to the Google+ business page that you would like to review.

If you don’t have the link, search on Google for “(business name) Google+” and if they have a profile it should show up at or near the top of the Google search results. The URL you are looking for will look something like this: https://plus.google.com/102615069589591255375/about

2. To leave a review, look for the “Write a review” button located at the bottom part of the business page.

You can also click on the pencil icon located on the right side of the business name. See the red arrows in the image above.

3. This takes you to the sign in page. If you already have a Google+ account just login and this will take you to the review page (Skip to Step 9). If you don’t have a Google+ account, click on the orange “Create an Account” button to get started.

4. Fill in all the information requested because these are required (except for the mobile phone – you can leave that blank). Choose your desired username and password. This will be your login to Google+ so you may want to write this down on a piece of paper so you don’t forget.

5. Complete the word verification and check the Agree to Google Terms of Services box.

6. Sometimes Google will require a phone verification. Skip to the next step if you did not get this notification. If you were redirected to this page, you need to give your cellphone number and Google will send you either a text message or a phone call with the PIN code depending on which option you chose.

7. Welcome to Google+! Click on “Get started” to move forward.

8. You may upload a photo if you would like. Click “Next step” when done.

9. You are now ready to write your review. Choose the quality of service from Poor to Excellent. Click “Publish” when you are done writing your review. That’s it!

10. Don’t forget to click on “Follow” if you like to get updates about this business!

(4) peeps have had something to say...

This is a nice little guide for those who really need to know the basics. Do you notice that Google only shows certain reviews? have you seen more reviews or less reviews since the new local knowledge graphic carousel launched? Just curious.

Haven’t had enough time since the carousels came out to analyze that, not to mention these don’t display for all searches so often times we don’t even see them display at all. For example we have a large number of clients in the legal industry and those searches don’t display the carousel.

Good Reviews are a critical part of our business. Bad reviews hurt but cannot be avoided. I totally agree that you should not try to cheat the system or even put your clients real reviews on the internet. Let them do it. Many of these companies require a user to sign up before then can enter a review…, you may have given them permission to record your IP address, location and with boolean logic they may “see” false posts etc.

Thank you Mike for a great guide to doing it right when it comes to reviews on Google. Let me say this as a final thought, I truly hate Yelp…sorry to say. Try to keep your customers away from them.